A Left Hook Like God's
by Rongwrong
Summary: The lurid criminal half-world of pachinko is decadent and depraved! Still, while trying to distract him from despair over world affairs, Jinroku inadvertantly takes Nozomu, and Matoi of course, on a savage journey to the heart of the Tokyoite dream.


Notes: Even though I'm generally an utter snob about this sorts of things, I'm putting this on FF.N because I worked ridiculously hard on it, but no-one ever reads my goddamn LiveJournal anyway. That's one way to avoid my naïf, self-important rants and hack writing. The life I lead truly is a shameful one, but still, I seek exposure and therefore shove this tl;dr gen dark-ish fic down your throats. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

I know I do.

Disclaimer - Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei is the intellectual property of Kumeta Kohji. Additionally, a lot of the imagery and few vague shout-outs intentionally references Murakami Haruki's _The Windup Bird Chronicle and A Wild Sheep Chase/All God's Children Can Dance._ That's because this whole fic is basically intended as a kind of gentle parody of Murakami's style for those In On The Joke, as permitted under the terms of fair use, because he is a pretty cool guy and you should go read his books. So please don't sue me. Also, because I'm _weird_, this story references some actual events concerned North Korea-Japan relations earlier this year; mainly, this talks about the personal/social reactions to it and attitudes towards North Korea than the event itself. Sorry if I step on anyone's toes, but any views expressed herein probably don't reflect my own, and are even less likely to they reflect those of Kumeta-sensei or anyone of important.

* * *

A L E F T H O O K L I K E G O D' S

神様のような左フック

Jinroku, an aging gentleman of an otherwise sanguine temperament, had a habit of visiting a certain pachinko hall in Higashi-Ueno every time he felt himself caught up in any kind of problem that was larger than he was. Sometimes it was a personal matter, or business, but more often these days, it was some kind of event in the world at large. It wasn't a pattern he was entirely conscious of, but, if you were to draw up a chart of Jinroku's proximity to this certain pachinko hall and, say, the perceived closeness of nuclear war, you would find a stunning correlation. He had no personal or business connections to this particular hall whatsoever; it was case of simple conditioning. Hundreds of other professional-looking men also crowded here during the long dark _o-yatsu_ of the soul. There must've been something relaxing about it, to watch the random motion of the tiny silver pinballs, with their eyes like seashells amid the smoke. There was also the incentive to make some quick cash, through the convoluted trade-in system designed to sidestep the anti-gambling laws. Even so, a vague anxiety sat at the back of Jinroku's mind when he parted the anachronistic blue noren curtains. But all the same, it was a Sunday night, and it wasn't like he had anywhere else to be.

"Welcome!" A young girl in a bright uniformish _happi_ greeted him. She looked a little familiar, but he paid it no mind. After buying a can of UCC coffee-milk, he sat down in front of his favorite machine, poured in a few hundred yen, and collected the clattering pinballs in a rectangular dish. He'd never won a big payout on it so far, and so by his reasoning this one was "due."

One thing which set this particular hall aside from most others was a small Sony TV8-301 transistor television, which was suspended on a ledge on the wall opposite Jinroku. It was almost like a foreign concession to any passing time-travellers from the Showa era, moulded in dark brown Bakelite and always fuzzily tuned to NHK General. He didn't feel like watching it, and even if he had, it would've been impossible to make out the words over the roar of klaxons, and the constant_ pa-chi, pa-chi_, clack-clack-clack of the tiny pinballs raining down the faces of the machines. It was like a tree falling in the forest with no-one there to hear it, only the forest was at the epicenter of an H-bomb. Still, the dry_ desu-masu_ litany of the announcers continued.

_"--is reported to be in preparations for launching a Taepodong-2 missile within several days, according to US intelligence agencies. It is currently uncertain whether the missile is carrying, as Pyongyang insists, a satellite, or if it is, as many here in Japan suspect, a warhead. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comments that if the launch goes ahead, it will be in opposition to several United Nations Security Council resolutions, and the US will voice its strong opposition to such--"_

**//ipachipachipachipachipachipachipachipachipachi-ka-kiiiiiin//**

_"Meanwhile, here in Japan, fears are rife over the Taepodong-2's war potential. The government warns that it will pre-emptively destroy any missiles launched. However, North Korea has today indicated it will consider any Japanese incursions into North Korean airspace an act of war, and is prepared to retaliate without hesitation. The previous launch of a Taepodong missile was in 2006, which ended in failure and--."_

**//ER IS YOU-- A WINNER IS YOU! -- A WINNER IS YOU! -- A WINNER IS YOU! -- A WINN//**

A bowlful of newly-won pachinko balls spilled out of the machine in time with the English jingle. Jinroku smiled, his initial vague anxiety replaced by an even vaguer sense of calm. After a while, he couldn't even make out his own reflection in the glass panel of the machine. He began to lose awareness of the boundaries of himself and the world at large. The ontological phenomenon of that which is known as "Jinroku" became dispersed throughout the room, throughout the universe. As long as the game continued, he was present and absent in all things. There was only room in his waking mind for how he could control the machine's randomness; its miniature meteor showers of lights and silver pellets.

Hour by hour, the night bore on without change. Once the houselights came on, signaling the close of the day's trade, Jinroku snapped back to consensus reality. Once he felt like himself again, he swapped in his collection of balls for a few cartons of Marlboro Reds. He wasn't sure whether he could be bothered to swap them in for cash at the trading post next door; anyway, if he did, the profits would go right on over to the Taito-Iijima syndicate... Seeking anonymity in an unfamiliar district had its drawbacks.

"Much obliged, miss," Jinroku said to the girl behind the counter.

"Have a lucky day, sensei!" she responded in kind.

Now, how did she know my day job, I wonder? he though as he stepped into the night. Perhaps she was just being polite...

At any rate, she was right. It would be midnight soon, and a new morning was about to begin.

* * *

The following Monday, despite the overcast dawn, Jinroku was ready as anything for the working week. It was only a quarter past 7, but a fresh rush of caffeine started to kick in on his way in through the main gates. With only a few dozen students or so milling about the campus for early morning clubs, it didn't even quite feel like a school yet. He folded his dry umbrella in on itself and swapped his boots for inside-shoes at the vestibule, then drew in a lungful of the warm recycled air. He particularly liked how the biscuit-coloured wood of the hallways had a toasted, tobacco-like smell under the heating ducts when he passed them by.

Jinroku pushed the sliding door to the teachers' room ajar. To his surprise, at the opposite side of the room stood Nozomu Itoshiki, decked out in his usual off-white kimono attire, and looking to be very absorbed in whatever it was he was doing. Jinroku wasn't sure what exactly that was, but it apparently involved a neat pile of small cardboard boxes which Nozomu produced from his sleeve pockets and left on the counter by the communal fridge. _Now, what the devil's he up to? _Jinroku thought sneakily._ It's not like him to be so early._

Jinroku fancied that he might have caught his colleague in the midst of something innocently untoward, along the lines of smoking indoors, or writing personal correspondence on the school letterheads. His curiosity aroused, Jinroku decided to observe how it played out, like you might watch a squirrel or an uncommon bird.

Nozomu looked a trifle thinner than usual, and Jinroku glimpsed an unfocused scowl on his profile when the young man crossed the floor to the water cooler. He filled a paper cup, and after opening the first of the piled boxes, popped out a couple of white tablets from an oblong silver sheet. He frowned at them, as if he was in two minds about what they were for, but after a little trepidation he licked them off his palm, gulping back the rest of the water in one for a chaser. He repeated this process in exactly the same manner several times over for the remaining boxes, refilling the paper cup and even hesitating a little each time. Finally he settled by the window with another full glass of water, and seemed to stare at the ink-wash skyline without moving again._ I'll just wait until he goes back to his desk,_ Jinroku thought, _maybe that way he'll be none the wiser._ Still, Nozomu kept still as a painting of a statue in a photograph. The whole scene filled Jinroku with the intense desire to be somewhere else. Eventually there was no sense in evading the awkwardness any more.

"Um," Jinroku finally said to break the silence. "Good morning, Itoshiki! Are you well today?"

A visible shiver shot up Nozomu's spine and he inhaled a mouthful of water in surprise.

"FFFFfff--- morning, Jinroku!" he sputtered, accidentally knocking the pyramid of medicine boxes to the ground. "Didn't see you there," he continued with a pained expression, and began to cough violently. Mortified, Jinroku quickly stepped over to the younger man's side.

"Are you alright?" Jinroku asked. "Do you need for me to strike you on the back or anything?"

"Just-- something gone down the wrong way then, excuse me," Nozomu wheezed. "Another glass of," he coughed, "water would be," cough, "nice if it's not too much," he took a great sucking in-breath and clutched at his throat. "Oh, Christ, choking, going to die..."

"Breathe normally, you'll be just fine," Jinroku said reassuringly.

He pulled Nozomu along by both of his sweaty hands to a chair by the other window, which he opened wide before fetching another glass. There was an unseasonal chill to the morning air. The dark grey clouds were now more active than before, cracking open in places to patches of mockingly blue sky. Nozomu snatched the fresh glass of water and sipped at it nervously. Jinroku uncomfortably ran his hand through his thinning forelocks and looked at the ceiling. A long silence settled between the two teachers until Nozomu finally caught his breath.

"Uh, please excuse me," he said. "That was inexcusable of me, just now. I take it you... you saw all that, yes?"

"It's quite alright, as long as health issues aren't interfering with--"

"I should've taken care of it at home. And then to lose my composure, on top of that!" Nozomu folded one arm behind his head and grimaced. "But, uh, they're on prescription, I assure you."

"Oh, I'm sure of it!" Jinroku insisted. "I just feel bad to've startled you--"

"And I only took the recommended dose this time."

"Ah, is that so?"

An uncomfortable quiet spell elapsed between them while Nozomu finished the glass of water. Jinroku went to set his own briefcase down, but he saw that Nozomu quickly twisted around and kept speaking.

"And you know, it's only as a trial. And in fact, they're just for--"

"You don't need to justify yourself to me, lad!" Jinroku said with a laugh. "You and me, we're equals as far as I know. Besides, we've all got skeletons in our closets, as they say. Why, even--" Jinroku half-began, but quickly checked himself.

"I wonder whether I shouldn't just call in sick for the rest of the day, perhaps..." Nozomu sighed and lowered his head. "I was feeling confident before, but after that, I'm not sure I'm up to teaching."

"It's your call, Itoshiki. But since we're public sector teachers, we're only allowed a set number of sick days off per year, you know," Jinroku responded, taking a stern tone. "And I don't want to sound critical, but you already did take two straight weeks off just last month."

"But I wasn't feeling well!" Nozomu said defensively. "I'll have you know I had the very same thing as Akutagawa."

"Is that right? Well, one of the lads in my homeroom told me he saw you milling about Kitashikahama with a couple of your students the very same weekend. Said he didn't recognize one of them at a distance, but that Tsunetsuki girl was definitely there, as usual. Now, I won't mention it to Chie or anyone this time, but you'd do well to avoid taking time off for things like that."

"You don't understand! She's always--"

"If I don't understand, then the Board certainly won't," Jinroku countered. "Please believe me when I say I've got only your best interests at heart, Itoshiki."

"Very well... If you insist, I'll stay on for now," Nozomu surrendered. "But don't say I didn't warn you I was feeling overtired. When I die of _karoushi_, it'll be on your conscience."

Jinroku switched the transistor radio on his desk to NHK FM, which was a minute or so into Bellini's "Casta Diva" on a bland morning classical program. Nozomu, a _karoushi_? Death from overwork? The very idea! If anyone was going to die of overwork, it would be 2-H's substitute teachers. Still, he sometimes couldn't tell whether (relatively) young people like Nozomu were being ironic with him or not. It made him feel intensely out of touch, but at the same time, he also felt an twinge of guilt for badgering Nozomu even a bit. Sunken into the armchair, and apparently paying close attention to the radio, he looked exactly like a petulant youth in a coffeeshop. As a matter of fact, everything he was doing that morning, Jinroku noticed, he did with a pathos that, from a distance, resembled childishness. On one hand Jinroku was fed up with it, but at the same time he found it stirring a kind of protectiveness.

The woman on the radio was up to the bit in the aria about the "_il bel sembiante senza nube e senza vel_" when Jinroku walked over and quite sharply brought his hand down on Nozomu's shoulder.

"There, there, lad. Cheer up! The whole stars-and-violets temperament isn't becoming for a young man of your status. Which isn't to you're by any means advanced in life yet, but you've got a lot of potential in this job that I couldn't bear to see you waste on insubstantial things."

"Insubstantial things?" Nozomu shot back, sounding very offended. "I don't think about anything insubstantial, you can be sure of that."

"Well, perhaps I misspoke. I'm sure whatever it is, is substantial to you," Jinroku conceded, "but perhaps another perspective would be useful."

"I don't have anyone to speak to," Nozomu said poutingly. "This is what it means to be an outsider."

"Well, if you think I could help in any sense--"

"How could you possibly? I hardly even know you outside of this building. I don't even know what you do in your casual time."

"Well, sometimes it's even easier to relax people you don't know well," argued Jinroku. "Like a doctor, for instance. Or a therapist, or the people at the public baths..."

"Aah! Yes, but you see!" Nozomu flailed a bit, looking a bit like an angry panelist on a TV debate. "I already intimately know a doctor, _and_ a therapist, _and_ a youth who works at the public baths, all of whom are already deeply enmeshed in my personal problems! So, clearly there isn't anyone left I can even trust as a stranger!"

"I'm afraid I don't see your point at all," Jinroku said flatly.

"Actually, come to think of it, neither do I." Nozomu stood up to face the window again.

"Very well!" he said. "I'll start over. Where was I before I got sidetracked?"

"You were just about to tell me what was bothering you."

"Was I? Really? How queer!" Nozomu cried, then quickly sat down again. "That doesn't sound like something I'd do..."

"Which would be why you got confused just now. But you definitely were."

"Promise?"

"Oh, unreservedly."

"Well, in that case...."

When Nozomu began in a tone on voice that seemed to channel darkness itself, Jinroku began to regret ever becoming involved in other people's affairs.

"Lately I've been worried about the things they say on the news," said Nozomu quietly. "And the things they don't."

"The things they don't?"

"Well, the things that are kept hidden by the media; often dangerous things."

Nozomu wouldn't let his gaze meet Jinroku's, but kept either looking in the distance or off to one side, as if he was addressing some unseen third person standing off in the middle-distance. It was an intensely unsettling affectation.

"Now, as a caveat, I know I tend to talk about death a lot. Often my own, in fact, so you might very well say that I'm a morbid person. But even so, I know I don't want to die in a crowd. It's so anonymous; I wouldn't enjoy it all. There wouldn't even be anything to bury, can you imagine it? War, that is to say..."

"The war!?" Jinroku interrupted incredulously. "But you weren't even alive then, Itoshiki! Don't try giving me the 1000-yard stare; you're heisei-danshi material to the bone."

"Not 'The War', just war in general," Nozomu clarified.

"It's already happening everywhere else in the world. I look at what is done to people in Iraq, or Palestine and so on, and feel such intense disgust for human beings I can hardly stomach it to count myself among the species. In my mind's eye, I already see the bombs fall, one after another. When they fall, they flatten the cities and kill the soldiers. Before they even run out of soldiers to kill, they kill the civilians. They fall on schools, kill the students and blow their arms off. Then the soldiers move in shoot their fathers and their mothers and all their friends," Nozomu listed. His glasses caught in the line of light just so as to eclipse his eyes. "These are the sorts of things I've been thinking about lately."

Jinroku was becoming conscious of a deepening rift of anxiety in the other man, to which he had no idea how to respond. All he could tell was that it didn't wholly correspond with what he was actually saying. Nozomu spoke as if he were reciting poetry; there had to be some hidden meaning behind it. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was suddenly reminded of when, as a child, he'd dropped a handful of coins to a deep wishing well. Even after a full minute, they still didn't strike the ground. It must have opened up right to the very center of the earth, he thought. He prayed for some proof that the falling had stopped, but nothing came. There was just the fall -- the ongoing anticipation, that terrifying emptiness of the darkness, just before they found their way to whatever lay at the bottom of that selfsame darkness.

"On top of that, I also have a recurring nightmare that upsets me greatly. In it, I'd walked outside, and they-- I couldn't tell, I got the impression it was North Korea-- they'd dropped dropped bombs all over the city. There wasn't anything left, just burnt out skeletons of all the old familiar buildings. The sky was red and hazy, like pictures of Mars. The streets all ripped up, with the subways and sewers spilling out and the bridges collapsed into the sea. Charred power-lines and telephone poles stretched out for miles along the river.

"Almost everything solid had melted into air. I thought I was the only survivor until I saw them - hundreds people were crawling through Akiba with their skin still dripping off them. I could even recognize them-- my old friends and brothers, students, and so on. That's when I woke up, trembling. I can't stop thinking of it. I'm 100% that sure it's going to happen soon. So soon, in fact, I think I should just end it all now, so I won't have to be around to see everyone care for die in such a way."

"I couldn't sleep past 5 this morning, so I decided to come in early. But over and over again, my mind returns to it," Nozomu sighed, his glasses thoroughly misted over. "Such things; they truly terrify me, Jinroku."

Jinroku broke into a cold sweat and was, again, filled with the desire to be somewhere, anywhere, else.

"I'm in despair," Nozomu concluded ineluctably. "The ever-present threat of nuclear war has left me in despair."

After this, a long time passed with neither man having anything else to say.

"Uh, it looks like you're having a tough semester," the older man finally offered weakly. "But you know, Japan won't ever go to war again, so you probably don't need worry about that. It says so, right there in the Constitution. Unless they reform Article 9, but then again, you see the protests that always strike up when they propose that. And as for North Korea, there's no real reason to be so alarmist..."

All of a sudden the idea struck him, like a ball bearing dropped from the sky.

"Ahah!" Jinroku exclaimed victoriously.

"'Ahah' what?" Nozomu asked.

"Ahah, in the sense that, while I hope you won't find it presumptuous, if you've been feeling particularly under the weather lately..."

"Yes?"

"Then perhaps you'd like to join me for a night on the town of sorts. Tonight, I propose! There's nothing but the swimming carnival on tomorrow, so I know for a fact you aren't busy with anything work-related."

"Well! That's a bit..." Nozomu jumped back a little. All of a sudden, he looked clear and energetic, as if he'd been talking about the weather rather than nuclear war a minute ago. "Thank you for the invitation and I'm flattered that you asked, but I--"

"Please," Jinroku pressed. "I insist that you do. You'll feel all the better for it, I promise you."

Nozomu looked at the floor again.

"It's not..." he started hesitantly, "it's not in Shinjuku 2-chome, though, is it?"

"Oh, God, no!" Jinroku gave a loud, silly laugh once he realised Nozomu's implication. "No, no, no; if I were that sort of person, I'd have said I loved you right off the bat, you silly sod."

Even so he could tell he hadn't succeeded in making Nozomu feel any less uncomfortable.

* * *

"I know it mightn't be the usual stamping grounds for man of letters like you, but..." Jinroku began, with no particular intention of concluding.

Under identical black umbrellas, the two men stood on the street opposite the Dolphin Plaza Pachinko Hall. A cross-sensory orchestra of pale pink and yellow light reflected off the raincoats and umbrellas of passersby en route to the Ginza line metrostop, giving the whole place the atmosphere of a dragon's palace at the bottom of the sea. Even in the midst of that, the Dolphin Plaza itself, a smallish building by pachinko standards, was hypnotic as a bug zapper. A whale-shaped storm of flashing neon marked its entrance amid the rainy AC half-light. That rain fell at an odd angle on the narrow street. It was too windblown, too heavy and too regular to even really feel like rain. It was more like the fake rain in a movie about mistaken imaginings of Tokyo. Of course, everything had that same simulacra quality to it just by virtue of being in the Ameyayoko-cho district. Nothing really seemed authentic, no matter whether it was the quality of the light, or the racks of Takeshi Murakami/Louie Vitton bags in market stalls, or the oddly tasteless tuna belly dinner set and tumblers of lemon-zested shochu Jinroku treated Nozomu to, against his will, earlier that night .

"It's true don't go out of my way to visit these sorts of places," Nozomu conceded.

"Never even taken a gamble?" Jinroku asked incredulously.

"Depends whether one counts becoming a teacher."

"Even in your bright college days?"

"No, not even then. When I was a student, my parents gave an allowance of a few hundred thousand per month. Tax purposes."

"Well, I'd say until you've gone into the black at pachinko a few times, you can't really call yourself Japanese!"

"I'm about as Japanese as lederhosen by that reckoning."

"Well, you never know until you've worn _geta_," Jinroku punned on the old truism.

"Oh, these? You noticed them?" Nozomu very nearly smiled. "_Sougiri_ paulownia. Generally I wear _zori_, but these are better for wet weather and..."

Without warning, Jinroku stepped out into the rain, calling back cheerfully from the middle of the road.

"No point standing around small-talking like blockheads, at any rate, Itoshiki! Not when there's money to be made."

Nozomu hitched his hakama up to his knees and tried to ford the flow of the gutter, but the tooth of a geta clog slammed against the drainage grate with a crack. Its leather fastening strap split clean in half.

"Oh no!" Jinroku exclaimed, grabbing Nozomu by the arm to stop his fall. "Breaking a geta's supposed mean awful luck, isn't it?"

"It's a symptom of it, not a cause," Nozomu uttered in a low voice without irony, limping as he followed Jinroku into the building.

Inside, the Dolphin Plaza was flooded with a headachey artificial moonlight. It was a strange sort of light; one that, no matter where you looked, seemed to cast no shadows. The hall was divided into several sections, one for each style of machine, and each vying for the most players. Towards the eastern corner of the _deji-pachi_ section by the entrance, a trio of blond boys wrapped up in expensive pinstripe suits greeted Jinroku with a curt bow when they saw him arrive. That was the only acknowledgment made by anyone in this strange collaborative entity of the Dolphin Plaza that either of them even existed. All other eyes were fixed to a pachinko machine. The human bodies attached to those eyeballs were reduced to a mere formality. Some of those arbitrary bodies hand their hands locked in odd positions around the turning wheels like Pompeiian casts. Nozomu noticed that others had even jerry-rigged coins and bottle caps against the wheels to hold them in place, and were somehow taking a nap against the pane glass. How could anyone possibly sleep amid that noise? And moreover, why wasn't anyone stealing their wallets? Probably, he decided, because the other players couldn't even register there was someone sitting beside them. A person could probably die in here and no-one would ever even notice, so deep was that isolation. Nozomu suddenly felt a pang of loneliness so intense he wanted to scream.

They exchanged, between them, about 3000 yen worth of notes for 100 yen coins at a gadget called, for some reason, a "sandwich machine," and milled about with heavy pockets while Jinroku tried to explain the basics of the game. From what Nozomu could understand, it involved the simple process of subtly maneuvering and staring at the machine with an angry expression until either you ran out of money or you reached some kind of _satori_ state. Jinroku went on to list the different kinds of machines; _deji-pachi, pachislo _and _fever-pachi_; how the machinists rigged it in favour of certain machines but only 5 days at a time; how to hold the handles; how it was allegedly like making love to a beautiful woman, and so on... A little flustered by this influx of new information, Nozomu sat down in front of the only machine with any immediate appeal. It was themed after "Tsurikichi Sampei," an old manga he vaguely remembered liking as a child.

"Good choice!" Jinroku said encouragingly. "That's a good one for beginners, anyway. And a certain something tells me this one's due."

"You can tell?" Nozomu asked.

"After a while, you learn how to read these sort of things. That's how the pros do it." Jinroku stroked his chin with a pensive expression. Nozomu had never seen someone deeper in their element. "The trick is knowing when the flow of gravity is on your side. You know how gravity works, don't you?"

Nozomu agreed that he did.

"Well, when people think of gravity they usually assume it just means falling. In reality, Itoshiki, it also shows that all things are drawn to one another. So when the pachinko balls look like they're falling down the face of the machine, they're also ever so slightly pulling the earth, and all the pachinko machines on it, back up to meet them. There's no scale in the world accurate enough to measure and account for that kind of force. But still, everything on your mind-- politics, heartbreak, war, and poverty-- is all just temporal compared to the flow." He paused to let the two English words sink in.

"That's where the element of true skill comes in. If you can perceive the flow, without resisting it, you can control it to your advantage. As far as us pachinko pros are concerned, that's the true meaning of the flow." All the time Jinroku had been explaining these truths, Nozomu knitted his eyebrows together in an expression of progressively deeper uncertainty, tilting his head to the very limits of his neck's flexibility.

"I... see." Nozomu finally said, head now parallel to his collarbone.

"Ah, but I think that's enough enough metaphysics, don't you?" Jinroku replied with an enthusiastic smile. "Do your best!"

Jinroku put a few coins in the machine and left the first torrent of 11.5 mm steel balls to spill out, then took neighboring seat for himself. Copying what he saw everyone doing, Nozomu fed them back into the machine until its uniform pattern of nails, holes and flippers was once again scattered with steel. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Every so often, he'd do something right and the machine would go batshit with sound and light, spilling out even more pachinko balls in time with a metallic rebel yell. The novelty of this wore off for Nozomu after about 30 seconds, and his mind began drifting to darker shores.

_Where are they up to with the missile test now? _he thought. The sound of klaxons morphed into an air raid siren. The _pachipacipachipachi _sound of steel became the _dondondondon_ sound of lead. He leaned his face against the glass and watched it fog gather with his breath. Probably going to be here any minute. What an undignified sort of place to be dying in; it smells of poverty. He thought of a handful of people in particular whom he would especially rather not see die under the ICBM. He thought of others he might like to have around him when it fell. Neither scenario was particularly appealing. _It can't be helped._

Nozomu thought that he must not be receptive to the flow, or whatever Jinroku it was talking about earlier, because certainly he had no desire to influence the paths of the falling metal. If they wanted to roll down into one of the tulip slides that rewarded him with yet more ball bearings, that was okay with him. And if they wanted to roll down into the center line and not give him a prize, well, that was okay too. _Either way is fine..._

"How's it going there, lad?" Jinroku yelled over the background noise. "Any profit yet?"

"It's hard to say. To be honest, I wasn't really paying attention. Did I break even?"

Jinroku took a glance at Nozomu's single tray of balls.

"Yikes," he said, "Maybe breaking your sandal back there really did have an effect. Only one tray after two hours is way below the average..."

"Well, no-- once I ran out space in the tray, I just started to put them in my sleeves." With some effort, he lifted up his arm to demonstrate; the sleeve pouch was filled with hundreds more of the pieces.

"You really are a strange one!" Jinroku exclaimed with a look halfway between amused and not. "Look, just stay here, I'll go get the assistants to bring extras."

Just at the point he felt to be alone, two pale hands dropped down and covered Nozomu's eyes.

"Guess who," purred their owner.

"Good evening, Tsunetsuki," he greeted her, not even registering surprise by now. "You were there?"

"The whole time." She snaked her bare forearms over Nozomu's chest, then lightly traced the Chinese character ｢落」into the fabric of his shirt with her index finger. "Anyway, it looks like you're doing well. Don't you want to know why?"

"No, not a bit. This entire set-up is inane." Nozomu struggled to free one arm and struck at the face of the machine. "Why, pray tell, is this considered to be is the national pastime? All it does it reward passivity and isolation. I've hit "fever" four times in the last hour without so much as moving. And you know what's the most ridiculous thing of all? I was dragged here by Jinroku, like it was some kind of spiritual health resort!" Nozomu shrugged over in a heavy sigh. "That man just frightens me on so many levels."

"Have you thought about leaving yet?"

"Too tired to think. Need to get coffee before anything else. I assume you'll do the same."

For some reason, when when Nozomu and Matoi sat down at the long communal table in the cafe section, the whole miasma of cigarette smoke in the room seemed to pool directly above them like thought balloons.

"Can I get you anything, Sensei?" Matoi said with an expression of concern. "You look really tired."

"Beyond tired," Nozomu replied, "I've had about 6 hours of sleep in as many days. I've been so worried, I can't eat, I can't sleep nights, I can't do anything. Like I was saying in class, it's because of the whole situation in North Korea. And don't you go calling me alarmist -- only I know what's really going on. It's not like it's a matter of being left- or right-wing, either. As far as I'm concerned, both sides of the House are too hopelessly corrupt to do anything about it. But I'm sure our very lives are hanging in the balance of this. Why won't anyone else take it seriously?

"On top of that, there's one thing I can't explain. I read there's the equivalent of $600 million US dollars Japan sends to the government of North Korea, excluding foreign aid, that's completely unaccounted for. That's got to be where they're getting the funds for the missile program, isn't it? But what you can't explain is how it's getting over there in spite of all the tariffs and income taxes. Could be a mob thing, I guess, but..."

"Go ahead and talk to me about it," Matoi offered. She reached across the narrow table and took hold of his hand. "Do you think they're really going to declare war?"

"Without any doubt."

"Well, if it's so certain, then dancing would make just as much sense as worrying about it."

"What? Eve of nuclear apocalypse, and you want to go dancing?"

"No, not really," Matoi admitted, though her expression suggested she liked the dancing idea after all. "Because I don't think North Korea's declaring war on anyone. I just mean these kinds of things tend to distract you, you know? From what you can make a decision about, or you could actually change..."

Somewhere close-by in the hall someone hit a jackpot and the Gunkan March of the Imperial Navy played out as an incongruous victory strain. Matoi clapped and smiled as if she'd just remembered something wonderful.

"Oh! Speaking of which? I rigged your machine. Aren't you pleased?"

"You're too young to understand!" Nozomu cried, sulkily stabbing at his drink with a straw. "On that note, you shouldn't even be here, Tsunetsuki. And there are several reasons for this, first and foremost being the restraining order I've been forced to take out--"

"You were being tsuntsun," she whispered, and flashed a tiny smile.

"Second, correct me if I'm wrong, you're underage."

"If two people can find love, does it really matter what point of life it happens?"

"We-- I mean, you could be arrested for coming in here, and I certainly won't do a thing to prevent that."

"If you have a thing for juvenile delinquents, then..."

"JUST. GO. _HOME_!"

"With you?"

Nozomu didn't even dignify that last one with a response for a while. Glancing past her to the prize counter, the answer struck him.

"Win me a carton of Peace Filtereds and I'll consider--"

Her eyes lit up like an H-Bomb blast and she'd run away to the nearest pachinko machine before Nozomu even finished his sentence. He downed his ice coffee in one and took off to the main hall as fast as he could.

"Thought you'd like to know. The young lady over there is a notorious juvenile delinquent," he alerted a security guard on the way past. The well-built blond boy nodded and went off towards Matoi, and Nozomu truly felt that he had accomplished something quite grand.

He walked slowly back into the maelstrom of sound and color, still leaning a little to the left to accommodate for his broken sandal. Nozomu tried to find his original chair, but somehow, everything in the room seemed to have gotten up and switched places while he wasn't looking. Nothing looked familiar; in fact, there was something otherworldly to it. The deeper into the plaza he walked, the less distance he seemed to cover. He paced the clattering hedgerows of machines and their immobile players. They were all the same, like mirrors reflecting mirrors.

He even tried talking to some of them, but they made no response. Their breathing seemed to have stopped, but their blank eyes were still moving to follow the descent of the pachinko balls before them, moving backwards and forwards like the eyes of someone looking from a train window. He tried striking one of them to get his attention, but the shell of a body was like icy granite in the shape of a man. In a sudden panic he ran, but the narrow length of the aisle seemed to stretch out indefinitely. If he reached the end of one, it would loop into an endless recursion onto itself. He wondered whether he had stepped into some kind of Möbius strip in the universe, a loop of background running over and over and over again like a cheap cartoon.

"Jinroku? Tsunetsuki? Help me!" Nozomu cried out. "I, uh... I think sort of I broke reality."

"You can't see them now," replied the collective ontological entity of Dolphin Plaza. It had a familiar tone to it-- a girl's voice? Yes, definitely a girl's voice. Something that was almost the complete opposite of himself...

"Who's there?" he asked apprehensively. "What is this place!?"

"It's the Dolphin Plaza. That should answer both of your questions. But then again, it's not really a place. In fact, it's quite the reverse of a place."

"Then what is this, some kind of a dream? A hallucination?" He fell to his knees. "I don't care! Just make it stop, I beg you!"

"We can't stop here," replied the Dolphin Plaza with a gentle laugh. "Pachinko is more powerful than you could ever realize. It controls everything that rises, everything that falls. Life, and that which is not life."

"But it's just a stupid game! You don't even do anything."

"Yes, but this is all a manifestation of the flow," the Dolphin Plaza continued. "One which happens to take the form of a pachinko hall at this point in time. You can't control it anymore than the movement of one season into another, the way an apple falls from the tree, a bullet pierces skin, a bomb falls in the ocean, a satellite circles the earth. Right now, the flow is commanding you to stay right here and realize something. Something very important about the nature of the flow, Pink Supervisor."

"And if I don't?"

"I don't know," said the Dolphin Plaza. "It could be you'll be trapped here forever."

"So... when I realize what you are, I'm free, aren't I!" Nozomu taunted, pointing to the ceiling as if he imagined that was the Dolphin Plaza's face. "Hah! Got you now, you _dou_-S-level sadistic entity-place-spirit-_kami-_person-thing!"

"Well, then you might still be trapped here forever, but at least you'll have learned something cool, right?"

"Oh, enough! Be quiet!" Nozomu yelled at the being, but then startled quite suddenly. "Wait, hang on-- what did you call me a moment ago?"

But after that there were no more words. There weren't even any sounds in that corridor of flashing lights. A tide of shocked nausea rose over him; he'd lost his only chance. There was nothing he could do but lie there, curled up like a child. He cried until he was empty of tears. How much time has passed by then? No matter, time has no meaning in a pachinko hall even in the best of circumstances. That was when he realized there was only one solution to this.

Scrambling to his feet, Nozomu reached into his pockets and pulled out his five-packet psycho-pharmaceutical cocktail. Perhaps they might be useful to him after all. There were still ten or so doses left -- that much ought to be enough to get you out of whatever reality you happen to find yourself stranded in. In his haste opening the first one, however, a couple of them fell soundlessly to the floor. Five second rule, Nozomu thought, and scrambled to grab them before they rolled under the machines.

Instead, they passed right through the middle of the stretch of wall. It was the strangest thing he had ever seen. Nozomu lightly touched the same place, which quivered slightly like gelatin before regaining its shape. He tried reaching his whole arm through the space in between lights. That barrier, if it could be called that, felt so wet and organic it felt vaguely indecent. Maybe... he thought about it. He took a deep breath and stepped through that wall of wires and falling steel. It really was like walking through a block of soft, cold tofu.

As if it were as natural as breathing, he found himself standing dry and calm at the furthest end of the hall, beneath the Bakelite Sony TV. Noise flooded everywhere again, and he'd never been so relieved to see the NHK. He couldn't make out the words, but it was some kind of press conference with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak. The politician looked incredibly ill at ease about something. Just then a bulletin flashed across the bottom of the screen:_ Taepodong-2 launch confirmed by JSDF, US military. Details at 12._

Nozomu became conscious of his breathing as it became slower. Things were somehow dreamier and more slurred in the familiar reality than the other one. He tried to discern the sound of the television over the background noise, but still felt too drained to really concentrate. _Pachinko is more powerful than you could ever realize..._ the words were caught in his mind like a fly bashing up against a closed window. In his mind he flicked back and forward between what he saw and what he remembered. What was he supposed to realize?

It came to him without warning. The last penny dropped; his jaw dropped; hundreds of ball bearings dropped from his sleeves.

With that, Nozomu jumped up on top of a row of machines, taking on the manner of a revolutionary. Summoning every ounce of strength, he kicked one of them over, setting off another two to fall like dominoes.

"Everyone! Please listen to this!" He clapped three times out of habit to the gathering crowd of onlookers, as if he were trying to control an unruly class. "It's a matter of national security that you all stop playing immediately! I know this is going to be hard to believe, but the money from pachinko is obviously what's funding the North Korean nuclear program! There's no other way to explain it!"

A curious crowd quickly gathered around him. With the speed of thought that only comes to the truly manic, Nozomu fired off his reasoning for the newfound conspiracy theory. The harshest and most eloquent words came to him naturally, like he was tapping into the flow itself. Of course they weren't really listening to what he had to say-- he spoke too fast, and in much too poetic a register -- but they were more than a little surprised to see someone so frail and helpless-looking being so self-possessed, and so very clearly driven. Involuntarily, a grin like a mask stretched across his face, flecked with saliva at its corners. Finally, the world could see the lions and tigers lurking in his heart! And this had to be what the Dolphin Plaza meant by "something important," right? Obviously, it was now his duty and his duty alone to stop the almost imminent nuclear showdown. _Obviously._

* * *

_(("It's not what I meant at all," replied the Dolphin Plaza._

_"You didn't understand it, not even a bit."_

_Nozomu didn't hear it.))_

_

* * *

  
_

When he saw this Jinroku was still some rows away, walking alongside one of the blonde happi-coated assistants and carrying empty trays.

"Oh God, no," Jinroku muttered once he realized what was going on, one hand snapping to his face in frustration. "He's much worse than I thought..."

"You came here with that headcase!?" the other man asked. "He's scaring off business something awful."

"Yes, I'm terribly sorry, there's no excuse!" Jinroku supplicated. "The kid's just a little unbalanced, and I thought--"

"I'll call security," the blond boy groaned in a cracking voice. "And I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave as well."

"Shouldn't I try to--?"

"I think it's best you left right away, sir. And maybe think about finding somewhere else to play in the future."

Meanwhile, the management tried to drown out Nozomu's spiel by turning up the volume of the television, but Nozomu just considered the shouting match with the NHK further proof that the pachinko industry proper had something to hide.

"...Furthermore! There's more money spent on pachinko per year than the auto industry, social security or national defense! None of that gets taxed, because it's already borderline illegal anyway! But an amount of profit directly corresponding to that sum is sent off-shore to the government of North Korea every year! How can this be a coincidence?!"

Nozomu was speaking in such an impassioned voice when he felt a sharp tug on the hem of his hakama.

"Excuse me, sir, you're making a scene!" A small voice piped up. Nozomu quickly glanced down to its source.

"Ōkusa!" he exclaimed. "What on Earth are you doing here?"

"I work here. Sensei, I'm really sorry to have to do this, but..." Manami looked truly regretful as she spoke. "But this is my job, too. Please don't mark me down on the Sōseki essay for this..."

"What are you talking about, Ōkusa?"

"Angry wife mode - engaged."

With all the speed and grace of a prize fighter, Manami jumped over on the fort of upturned machines. She grabbed Nozomu's ear like she was peeling a tangerine and dragged her teacher to the back exit, throwing him roughly into the street and slamming shut the doors. A light rain began to fall once again.

"You haven't heard the last of me, warmongering mercenaries!" Nozomu yelled at no-one in particular as he pounded at the grimy window. "I'll blog about it! I'll start a thread on every board of 2channel! Just you wait! I'll--"

Just then a force like a meteorite slammed against Nozomu's jaw. He slid sideways across the wet sidewalk like a pebble. Jinroku stood over him, stroking his fist menacingly. He gave the impression of having waited out there a while.

"I've HAD it with you, Itoshiki!" he shouted. "Snap out of it! You've had a privileged life, you've got a stable job, and for some reason the kids all worship you. You don't have any genuine problems to justify this garbage, so you invent them!"

Once his glasses were back on, Nozomu checked to see if he was missing any teeth, more than a little stunned that the man who had treated him with such gentle good humor so far would have that kind of reaction. He seized up and scrambled backwards in fear as he remembered the tattoo of a grinning devil.

"But I'm-- I'm not inventing anything..." he stuttered eventually.

"Are you actually that paranoid, Itoshiki? Where'd you pick up all that racist garbage, anyway? Since when did you have such a grudge against Koreans? "

"Hey, I don't!" Nozomu protested, though he felt, shamefully, that perhaps he had been jumping to conclusions after all. "Uh, that is to say, actually some of my best friends are--"

"Bollocks. You don't have _any_ friends. Not that it's hard to see why, now. You're just looking for another reason to be miserable, and this time tomorrow it'll be something different, and equally deranged. The only constant in the equation is you.

"And because of you..." Jinroku spat as he approached again. Standing over the fallen man, he took hold of the high-collar edge of Nozomu's kimono. "I can't go to my favorite pachinko hall anymore. The Mazinger Z machine was due, Itoshiki!_ IT WAS DUE! _You know not what Hell you have unleashed!" With that, he dropped Nozomu right there on the asphalt, ignoring his string of sobbing apologies.

"You're not worth my time," Jinroku said coldly. "Hopeless case."

He unfolded his umbrella and strode off in quiet rage to the main road of the Ame-yoko. This deep into the night it has become a different place. Though the rest of the street still had its glowing signs out in force, the large katakana sign which marked its entrance gate was no longer lit up. Likewise, all the stallholders had all gone home, wrapping their merchandise in blue tarpaulins to keep out the rain. By now all those narrow streets, which had crawled with life just a few hours ago, were empty of any soul. Jinroku reached the mid-way point of the street, and paused to light a cigarette under the green iron railway bridge. The white noise of the last train on the Yamanote line for the night clattered overhead. Jinroku imagined imagined throwing a certain co-worker in front of it and felt a little better. The rain gradually intensified until the whole street looked like a pixelated Van Gogh.

"Wait!"

A voice echoed through the street, nearly unidentifiable against the sound of water. But, as Jinroku fully expected, it was Nozomu. He was now holding his broken shoe in one hand, wiping at his bloodied nose with the other.

"Please just wait a moment," he begged.

"I have no further business with you," Jinroku replied. "Go home."

"But I don't know the way to the station."

Jinroku turned around, his mouth a flat line.

"Fine," he grunted. "Follow. But say one word, and I won't be held responsible for my actions."

Nozomu nodded solemnly and began to follow wordlessly, a few meters in tow.

Jinroku led him along practiced route to the terminal. Once the colors of the Ame-yoko faded, the concrete monotony of Ueno proper began, a cold comfort to Nozomu. At least the anonymous utilitarian apartment complexes weren't trying to sell him anything, and they probably weren't hiding any trans-dimensional non-spaces, either. Even the coolness of the rain was oddly soothing now to the grazed skin of his face. He was still drained of higher-level thought. There was only space in his mind for putting one foot in front of another and drinking in the unfamiliar sights of the quiet ward. Even the crumbling of the city under war seemed to be a distant fantasy now, replaced by unnameable, and far less concrete melancholy.

That night, the Dolphin Plaza had brought him to face a certain solitude in the depths of himself; a loneliness more intense and self-contained than, he felt sure, anyone else could imagine. It existed along the ineffable rift between "thought" and "felt," far outside the reaches of language, art, or sex. Was it something specific to him? A kind of madness? Impossible to say, and probably, irrelevant. Nozomu knew only that the experience of touching that void would now stain him, like a tattoo, as long as he lived.

Before long they had approached the foot of the high cement steps that came out near the Yushima-Tenjin shrine, overflowing like a ragged waterfall in the rain. In the few yards between Jinroku and Nozomu himself, a underweight yellow cat ran out along a stream of lamplight. It mewled harshly before melting off again into the dark. Jinroku, about to ascend the first stair, suddenly stopped in his tracks as if startled by the noise. He looked back over his shoulder accusingly.

"Itoshiki." he said. "What happened to your umbrella?"

"Someone stole it from the cloakroom," Nozomu replied, looking downwards.

"Honestly..." Jinroku exhaled through his teeth.

Nozomu just kept staring at the puddle reflecting the sky, as if wishing it would drown him. His glasses were a opaque mess, tears lost in rain.

"If I can, I also want to apologize if I've been overly emotional today," he said softly. "I think this is a result of the fact that not a single part of my life is really where I wanted it to be by this point."

Jinroku was not the sort of person to share an umbrella under any circumstances, let alone with Nozomu, who by rights still deserved a boot to the head. Even so, for a second, as he stood like a lost child vanishing into the rain, without warning, Jinroku was almost overcome by the urge to give the poor bastard a hug.

"You know, you're an incredibly easy person to get angry at," he said.

"Understood," Nozomu replied. You only can drown in only a few inches of water if you really set your mind to it... In the watery mirror image he saw something held out to him, and looked up. Jinroku had taken off his raincoat for him.

"Staying angry at you? Now, that's a somewhat different matter."

Just then, a guttural, aggressive voice broke through the quiet of the night air.

"Hold it_ rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrright_ there, ladies."

Three tall, thin blond youths swaggered nonchalantly up the narrow street. The suits they wore were far nicer than regular salaryman suits, yet with colorful tennis-coats layered over them. Two of them dragged metal pipes alongside; one along the bars of the metal fence hedging the street, the other along the wet ground. Amid all that, somehow, that verbal tic of the rolled r, so familiar from old mobster movies, was the most terrifying thing to Nozomu.

"_Yakuza_!?"

"I'm not surprised," Jinroku sighed. "We must've ruffled some feathers back there. Pachinko industry'd fall to its knees if it weren't for the 'kooze..."

"This is my fault!" Nozomu despaired. "By rights I should die here."

"Nonsense, I got myself into this years ago."

"But if I hadn't have gotten onto the damn tables--"

"Well, we probably wouldn't be in this mess right now, but there's nothing that can be done about that now."

By now the blond boys, clearly the same lads from the pachinko hall, were only a few paces away.

"Oi, oi!" one of the Blondies called out. "Talking to you, punk."

"Can I help you?" Jinroku asked calmly and turned to face them.

"Yeah, rrreckon ya can. How about you starrrt by explaining that parrrrticularrr scene back at the Dolphin?" The tallest of the three boys challenged. "You sons-of-a-bitch think we'd ally with the Chongrrryun? We're Japanese, dammit! Whatcha trrrying to set us up for? Who you rrreprrresent?"

"Oh, us? We're not representing anyone," Jinroku said, self-effacing as butter.

"Bullshit! Seen you scoping out the place for years, old man! Show the_ irrrezumi._"

"I can promise you there isn't anything like that!" Jinroku forced a laugh. "There must be some misunderstanding. I'm just a simple teacher at a public school, and this fellow here is my junior."

"A very good evening to you," Nozomu said incredibly formally with an awkward bow.

"Oi, megane!" The shortest of the three held a lead pipe just above Nozomu's head. "What-"

_"He'sgottattoosofaHannyadevilmaskinthestyleoflatterEdoperiodNohdramapleasedon'tkillus."_

"What the hell are you on... Talk sense!"

"Devil. Mask. Tattoo. Thing." Nozomu sobbed. "Don't kill us, please?"

"Ah... devil mask? Sa-a-ah," the one pipe-free kid said with an air of seniority. He tossed back his hair brazenly while Nozomu scrambled backwards. "Means Yamaguchi-gumi, don't it. This whole _ku_ is Taito-Iijima-gumi dirt. Surrre y'ain't so stupid you didn't know."

"You Yamaguchifags sure pull some weirrrd crrrap these days," the second continued. He took a large butterfly knife from a holster on his thigh and twirled it around pointlessly. "Why you wanna rrrough up our legitimate business so bad?"

The trio of Blondies soon had the two teachers cornered in the space between two garages.

"Don't panic! I don't never leave the house without a concealed weapon of some varrriety," Jinroku whispered, accidentally slipping into the old familiar dialect. "This here might look like an umbrella, but--"

"I'm pretty sure it is," Nozomu said lifelessly.

"That's what I want you to think! There's a--"

"No, I mean, you picked up mine by mistake," Nozomu continued. "See? There's my name printed right there on the handle."

"Oh, hell. I see your point." Jinroku cursed something far worse under his breath. Quickly he wedged the younger man behind him in the corner of the alley, not out of danger, but close enough to buy a few seconds once the makeshift umbrella-shield was out. "Run like the dickens soon as you see a break. See you in the next life!"

"Wait, what--?"

Nozomu covered his eyes. He still felt someone else's warm blood splatter over his clothes. He still heard the sick, wet thud accompanying a body's impact with the concrete.

* * *

_(("Hey, sensei! Did you realize it yet?" the Dolphin Plaza spoke once again._

_"That was just another manifestation of the flow."))_

* * *

A girl's voice rang out like a sawn-off shotgun.

"Sensei!!"

Nozomu opened his eyes. Jinroku still stood in front of him, quite unharmed, and quite surprised at this fact himself. It was one of the three youths that lay in a bloodied mess on the sidewalk like a smashed-open watermelon. The other two were beside him, one squatting to check for a pulse, the other standing and swearing. Close behind the three of them, under the pink and silver light of the '_Casta Diva_' love hotel's vacancy sign, Matoi Tsunetsuki stepped gingerly backwards, holding one of the long, skinny knives for filleting tuna. Blood fell from the tip.

"I think you've got my umbrella, young lady," Jinroku sighed gratefully. With that, his boot smashed into the back of the knees of the standing boy. He shoved Nozomu in the direction of the staircase and rushed to help Matoi, before calling back, "Get moving, boy!"

Nozomu felt like he had a head full of cotton and a body full of lead. The scene of violence played out in front of him like he was watching something that happened a long time ago, and to other people. Matoi sliced one of the boys across the face; Jinroku didn't even need a weapon to hold his own against them. All of that was a kind of unreality. He thought of what the Dolphin Plaza told him; _a manifestation of the flow? Perhaps, in that case..._ He tried to step backwards through that soft damp wall back to the real world. He fell cold against the same damp concrete steps.

Just then, the shortest of the three boys reeled back towards staircase. "Hey, bitch. The knife-from-behind thing? Seriously," he said expressionlessly. The Blondie dug a handgun from his suit pocket and walked back towards the fray. Matoi suddenly felt the cold metal slide along the nape of her neck.

"Dick move."

Without thinking, Nozomu jumped up and rushed at the gunman. With every ounce of strength he slammed the sharp tooth-edge of his broken wooden geta against the side of the Blondie's temple. The skinny yakuza dropped the gun, staggered and fell way too easily. Nozomu dropped his blooded paulownia shoe and stared at his hands. That's what they always do in movies when you kill someone for the first time. He didn't feel like it was helping much.

"Nice job, Itoshiki!" Jinroku brought his foot down on the Blondie's neck with a sickening crack and gave Nozomu a cheesy thumbs-up. He picked up the gun, grabbed the knife off Matoi and congratulated both of them on "such effective teamwork during a stressful situation."

"Fuck that, old man, back-up's alrrready on the way," the last conscious Blondie jeered through a split lip. Sure enough, a second small troop of slick-looking men in sweatshirts was beginning to gather at the opposite end of the street. Matoi quickly skirted over the fallen bodies and wrapped herself in her teacher's sleeves.

"Sensei!" she shouted urgently. "Quick, let's go!"

"But what about-"

"You just worry about getting Miss Tsunetsuki back safely." Jinroku called back confidently, with a twisted grin. "This is a business affair now. I can manage."

Nozomu once again became conscious again of the fact that it was raining. The menacing face of Jinroku's_ irezumi_ tattoos was visible through the damp fabric of his shirt.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Everyone not yakuza, scram!" Jinroku dared. He fired a couple of warning shots to the goons at the end of the road before speaking again. "Go on! Run, Melos!"

Matoi grabbed her teacher by the wrist and they clambered up the staircase to Yushima-Tenjin like some strange quadruped. It was just like being stuck in a pachinko machine and trying to climb to the top. Rain poured down on them like falling metal-- it gets hard to breathe if you run against the flow. Once they reached the top of the stairs, at the junction of two cobblestoned bike paths, they kept running. Without even the faintest idea where they were going, they rushed through the darkened empty streets as if being delivered by some divine wind. No lights shone in the suburban dark. That darkness, rather than being a simple absence of what is known as "light," was a tangible substance Nozomu and Matoi raced in tandem to escape. Even so, when you run fuelled by fear, it's as effortless as falling. Beneath that falling sky, bloodstained, shoeless, they didn't stop until the bright lights of the big city were visible once again.

Matoi asked before her breath had really returned to her, "Where are we now? How long's it been?"

"Not sure. I wasn't paying attention," Nozomu groaned. "Did we pass the Saigo statue?"

"No."

"Might be near Asakusa, then," he said. "Ought to put us in the clear, I imagine."

Nozomu finally unlocked his hand from Matoi's. There was still a hot, aching twinge through the side of his face, like the aura of a migraine. As the type to bruise easily, he shuddered to think how it would show in the coming days. He sat down to rest against an automatic newspaper kiosk and dragged in a long breath. The morning Asahi had already been printed and bound in a stack beside it -- that meant they would've have missed the last train by a long time. "_NK Missile Test Deemed "Failure"_, the washed-out newsprint read. In the final analysis, Nozomu was too exhausted to give a damn.

At least it wasn't raining anymore.

"Sensei, can I ask a question?" Matoi said hesitantly.

"Go ahead."

"Do you... do you think he'll really be okay in the end?"

_Jinroku? Probably_, he thought, though he said nothing for the moment. He folded up the collar of his borrowed raincoat and tried to make the sleeves hang less uncomfortably. Looking up at Matoi, he spoke calmly.

"If worst comes to worst, for someone his age, that guy's got a left hook like God's."

- T H E E N D -

With thanks to Katie, Yui and Kevin. And apologies to Kumeta-sensei and Murakami-sensei.


End file.
